We know your time is precious while you’re prepping for the GMAT. To get the most out of your prep, we recommend analyzing your GMAT practice test results and then using those findings to create a smart study plan moving forward. This will help you strategize, identify your strengths and weaknesses, and get more accustomed to the format of the test.Read more

How many GMAT practice tests (CATs) have you taken so far? Are you satisfied—or frustrated—with your progress?

One of the biggest mistakes I see students make is also relatively easy to fix: they don’t learn what they should be learning from their practice tests. This is exactly what we’re going to talk about today. Read more

My GMAT students are often surprised when I advise them not to take a practice test.

I don’t advise this for every student on every occasion; there are some legitimate uses for practice tests. In general though, I find that my students take too many practice tests at the expense of other more beneficial forms of study for a given circumstance.

Think of the GMAT like a Mozart sonata. Let’s say you are a pianist, and you want to learn the sonata. Would you begin by playing the whole piece from start to finish? No, instead you would work in small sections. You would identify the sections that are easy, and you would work on those sections just enough to maintain your ability. Mainly, you would be concerned with the difficult sections of the piece, which you would practice slowly and intently. Not until you had mastered those sections would you move on.

After you have put in all that practice time, you want to make sure that you can maintain your ability within the context of the larger piece. That’s when you want to play the whole piece: when you want to check to see whether your prior work is ingrained or whether you forget it when you are distracted by the other demands of the piece.

Looking for advice on evaluating your practice exams? Be sure to check out this article too.

First Steps

If you are just beginning to look into the GMAT, we recommend reading through The GMAT Uncovered before continuing. The same information can be obtained by attending our in-person or Live Online GMAT Open House Sessions. You can read more about these programs here.

If you feel like you have a good understanding of the exam, then it’s time to take a practice test! Until you’ve taken a full practice GMAT, there’s no way of knowing exactly how much you need to prepare for the exam. Fortunately, ManahttanGMAT makes this easy by offering a free computer adaptive exam that will serve as a useful diagnostic tool. Before you continue to structure your prep program, it is important to take a full exam. Additionally, in the scope of your business school application, it’s important to know the average GMAT score of the schools you are applying to. Here is a list of the top business school programs and their associated GMAT scores to get you started.